Last month I took a work trip to São Paulo, Brazil. I gave four Chrome/HTML5 presentations and talked to many engineers and designers over the course of the week, trying hard not to sound like a broken record. Luckily Brazil has a lot of people so the audiences were different each time! Here's a link to my slides, that I tweaked slightly depending on the audience.

I'll be dumping all of my slide decks and/or talk videos to smustalks on AppEngine. I've made the switch from building slides in Keynote to using this fantastic HTML5 slide deck template and my favorite text editor.

Food

• Delicious fruits of all varieties: exotic cashew, persimmon, star fruit, guyava, and way tastier bananas.
• Ridiculously massive portions of sashimi at japanese restaurants.
• The Rodizio we went to was super exquisite. Largest salad bar ever, including caviar (srsly).

Life

• SP is a concrete jungle like nothing I've ever seen. The whole city is built up within a 60km radius.
• Chaotic traffic patterns and insane motorcyclists abound. Everyone loves to drive between lanes and honk gratuitously.
• Super bumpy roads date back to the dictatorship days. If you take the wrong exit, prepare to jump around.
• Helicopters fly all over town and sometimes land precariously close to unsuspecting window cleaners dangling from highrise roofs.
• Beware foul smelling rivers and slums on the way to Friday morning meetings!

Work

• Super friendly people but my Portuguese skills failed to topple the language barrier.
• Long process to get into any office building. Some ask for ID, others ask for passport. Takes half an hour just to get in...
• Somehow, Google Brazil still feels like Google!

After my work was done, I took some travel photos and heard Samba da Minha Terra live, and by so doing, joined the ranks of Don and Magdalena!

I've never sailed the Amazon,
I've never reached Brazil;
But the Don and Magdalena,
They can go there when they will!

            - R. Kipling